Storytelling is an age-old art. All people tell stories in one form or another and much of human communication is intended to provide some form of story. However, some people are better storytellers than others. One of the differences between a good storyteller and a better storyteller is that the better storyteller tells stories in a way that the audience finds memorable. To accomplish this, the better storyteller takes care to tell the story in a way that ensures that the audience understands the contextual framework of the story. For the audience, this contextual framework makes the work of communication more vivid through providing more detail. The contextual framework also makes a work of communication easier to interpret properly (in line with the intention of the author) and thus more comprehensible. Further, it is widely accepted that ease and completeness of contextual recollection on the part of the creator and the audience provides an important contribution to the success of a work of communication.
A contextual framework typically takes the form of context information. Context information is information that is not strictly necessary to convey the narrative content of the story but that adds background and environmental details that help to draw an audience into the story so that the audience will better appreciate the story. By overcoming the context disparities that result from differences in age, social class, nationality, gender and race; the effective storyteller generates a message that communicates significance as well as abstract information. For example, the value of a contextual framework can be seen in knowing that a conversation is taking place in a white, hospital room with starched linen sheets and that the air is filled with the smell of rubbing alcohol and the linoleum is old and cracked. The context information modifies the core message in a manner that a simple retelling of the narrative of the conversation in the abstract does not.
Another reason contextual information makes a work of communication more memorable is that contextual information can allow the work of communication to be related to the actual experience of a person in an audience. For example, the aforementioned hospital room is located on the “Left Bank” of Paris. For people who have spent time on the “Left Bank” of Paris (or have vicariously experienced life in that location) then the communication of that information will stimulate a cache of memories related to such experiences. This makes the work of communication more memorable.
Although the preceding points are familiar to those versed in the arts, there is a notable lack of technological solutions to automatically assist a storyteller in authoring works of communication that show due consideration for these points.
Specifically, it will be appreciated that modern storytellers have a wide variety of computer and other tools such as video editors, word processors, audio mixers and the like that they can use to author works of communication that convey a story. These tools allow even novice storytellers to generate works of communication in a wide variety of forms. For example, a modern storyteller equipped with a conventional personal computer is capable of generating a work of communication that can take the form of printed output or other form of output expressed on a tangible medium of expression. However, such a storyteller is also empowered to create a wide variety of forms of data that can be used to recreate any performance or human or computer creation. Such a storyteller is empowered to create a work of communication that can comprise data that can be used at least in part in the process of generating output that can be presented to others such as characters, narrative or content that is used by a computer game, simulation or animation or other interactive experience. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that such a storyteller is capable of creating a work of communication that can include without limitation the content of one or more books, lectures, presentations, movies, stories, musical pieces, paintings, photos, dramas, animations, computer animations or computer generated videos, computer simulation data, or and audio content.
However, the modern authoring tools that enable such a storyteller to work in such a broad variety of mediums do not address the issues noted above and do not help a storyteller to author a work of communication that will be memorable. What is needed, therefore, are systems and methods that do so. For example, a typical obstacle to the use of technology in telling a memorable story is that human memory is generally far more efficient at extracting items of significance out of the vast collection of items of potential significance. However, the skillful use of memory assumes skills related to association, skills of knowledge and skills of recollection. One or more of these aspects of human memory may be deficient or impaired. These deficiencies may limit a storyteller's ability to recall contextual information that may be of particular use in making a work of communication that is memorable. Such modern editing tools and the like can do nothing to assist a storyteller under such circumstances. Similarly, modern authoring tools do nothing to help a storyteller to tell stories in a way that will be necessarily understood and appreciated in view of contextual frameworks that are already appreciated by the audience.
It will also be appreciated that better storytellers spend a great amount of time composing their stories to ensure that each story includes a proper mix of contextual information and narrative content and/or to ensure that the narrative content is told in a manner that resonates with contextual understandings of the audience. This, in turn, requires a significant amount of skill on the part of the storyteller and requires that the storyteller invest large amounts of time and effort in preparing material for presentation. Given the competing time demands imposed by modern life upon the time of casual and recreational storytellers, such storytellers will benefit from a system and method that can reduce the amount of time required to incorporate appropriate amounts and types of context into a work of communication.